


Who Interrupts the Act

by ViaLethe



Category: Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries - C. S. Harris
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21931450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/pseuds/ViaLethe
Summary: Sebastian just wants to reunite with his wife. Unfortunately for him, everyone else seems to have other ideas.
Relationships: Sebastian St. Cyr/Hero Jarvis
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Who Interrupts the Act

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luthien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthien/gifts).



> A Yuletide treat for Luthien - it’s suprisingly difficult to make these two ordinary!

Hero, Viscountess Devlin, formerly Miss Jarvis, daughter of the most powerful man in the kingdom and quite a formidable woman in her own right, had feathers in her hair. And while such ornaments were not uncommon among women of their class, Sebastian was inclined to think these had not been placed there on purpose.

“You’re back,” she said, swiping the back of one hand across her forehead, her eyes lighting up, mouth curving into a slow, warm smile. “I didn’t expect you before nightfall.”

“I’d been away too long already,” he said, crossing the library to take her in his arms, reaching up to pluck bits of pale down from her dark hair with a questioning look.

“Our bedroom needed refreshing in preparation for your arrival, I thought,” she explained. “I may have been a bit overzealous in plumping the pillows. My mind was...elsewhere.” The press of her body, curving into his in all the right places, left no doubt as to where exactly her wonderful mind had been. “I missed you,” she admitted, a long, breathless moment later.

Though a part of him wanted to point out he’d been away less than two weeks, surveying their country estate, the larger part of him couldn’t help but wonder at the force with which he’d missed her as well. “Why do you think I was in such a rush to get home?” 

“No murders this time?” Hero said, archly, even as she grasped his hand in hers, pulling him towards the door. “No espionage, thefts, or kidnappings to investigate?”

“Not the slightest hint of anything criminal,” he promised.

They’d just reached the doorway when Morey intercepted them. “My lord, there is a visitor-“

“Not now, Morey. I’m not at home,” Sebastian said over his shoulder, before catching a glimpse of a tall, solid figure looming behind his butler.

“Fortunate, then, that I did not come to see you,” Charles, Lord Jarvis, said, eyeing Sebastian with distaste as Morey bowed himself out of the situation. “Though you’ll do just as well, as it happens. I meant to ask Hero to pass along a message.”

“And what message would that be, Father?” Hero asked, lacing her fingers through Sebastian’s tightly.

“Not even going to offer me a brandy?” Jarvis stared at his daughter until she put a hand to the disarray of her hair, flushing pink. Turning to Sebastian with cold eyes, he said, “Very well. I came to say this: if Hendon attempts to involve you in his latest piece of scheming, you would do well to keep out of it.”

“I rarely involve myself in my father’s political affairs,” Sebastian said, returning to the library to pour himself a brandy, and pointedly not offering one to his father-in-law. “I don’t see why you think I’d start now.”

“He has a fool idea in his head about some conspiracy involving Lord Cumberland and Russia. You are to stay out of it, do you understand?”

“I promise you,” Sebastian said, draining his glass in one swallow, “at this particular moment, I have less than no interest in any government conspiracies either you or my father could come up with.”

“See that it stays that way,” Jarvis said, and nodded to his daughter. “Hero.”

As the sound of the front door closing resounded through the house, Hero sighed. “I suppose you’ll be off to see Hendon, then, and find out what that was about? I know you can’t resist a challenge, especially from Jarvis.”

“Absolutely not,” Sebastian said, capturing her hand once more and resuming their interrupted journey towards the staircase. “I meant it. I have no interest at all in political-“

“Gov’nor, you’re back!” Tom burst from the back of the house with such speed he nearly collided with the pair of them, skidding to a stop just in time. “I’ve been waiting and waiting - you’ll never guess what I done heard the other day from Benny, the chimney lad-“

“Slow down, Tom,” Sebastian said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Has someone died?” At his side, Hero turned her face away to hide her smile; her relationship with Tom was still a fragile one, nearly as fragile as his young pride.

“Not yet, my lord, but Benny said, and then I got it from Sally too, her as works down at the butcher’s shop, and Simon, you know, him from the Black Ram pub-“

“What exactly did you get from this varied collection of informants, Tom?”

The boy gulped, catching his breath and looking from Sebastian to Hero and back. “Rumors, my lord. Rumors of a weery rum customer indeed, one who’s actin’ mighty suspicious-like. They reckon he’s got something to hide, and it ain’t anything good.”

Sebastian frowned; as evidence of a crime, it wasn’t much to go on. “Do they think he’s involved in something dangerous?”

“Maybe,” Tom said. “They say he’s a foreign gent, and we’ve had plenty of danger from them lately, haven’t we?”

“Foreign?” Hero asked, her attention caught. “Did they say where he was from?”

“No, ma’am. But I heard him talking once to Simon’s dad down at the pub - sounded just like that snooty Princess and her people to me, them ones as was involved with Ashford.”

“Russian,” Sebastian said. “Interesting.” Squeezing Tom’s shoulder, he smiled. “We’ll go speak with your friends in the morning and see if there’s anything to this foreign gentleman.” Tom’s intelligence was intriguing, especially when paired with Jarvis’s cryptic warning, but at the moment Sebastian was all too aware of his wife’s scent at his side; of the warmth of her body against his and the pressing need to have her even closer.

The door to the back of the house had barely swung shut behind Tom’s departing, and slightly dejected, form before the bell pealed, and a bobbing feather atop a bright aquamarine turban appeared in the entryway below. “Don’t run from me, Sebastian,” the voice of his Aunt Henrietta, Dowager Duchess of Claiborne, called up. “I do see you attempting to make an escape with that handsome wife of yours, you know. Not,” she finished crisply, making her way into the library without invitation, “that I can blame you. She is a much more appealing prospect than I, these days.”

“How did you even know I was here, Aunt?” Sebastian ground out, turning on his heel and marching back into the library for what felt like the twentieth time that day.

“I hear everything,” she said, settling herself in the best armchair and eyeing the decanter with such undisguised longing that Hero moved to pour her a glass without being asked. “You know that well enough.”

“I suppose that’s why you’re here?” Hero asked, handing one glass to his aunt and another to Sebastian, her fingers lingering against his, her free hand pressing into his back. “I thought you needed it,” she whispered. _“Patience.”_

Struggling to hold onto the tattered remains of said patience, Sebastian turned to his normally-beloved aunt as she began to speak.

“Indeed it is. I was at a ball the other day, and I heard the strangest rumors. It seems there’s been a series of thefts lately, in houses where parties and balls have been held.”

“There’s nothing strange about that,” Sebastian said. “Every other season some young lord who’s found himself too badly dipped at cards succumbs to the urge to steal a trinket or two from his hostess when he thinks no one’s looking.”

“Oh yes,” the Duchess said airily, waving her hand. “What’s unusual about these thefts is what’s been taken. It isn’t what you’d expect.”

“Not jewels or artworks,then,” Hero offered. “State papers, perhaps?”

The Duchess shot her a sideways look. “Ladies’ undergarments,” she said, triumphantly.

Sebastian sputtered, choking on his swallow of brandy. “Pardon?”

“You heard me perfectly well,” his aunt said, sitting back in her chair. “Various rooms rifled through, but nothing at all taken as far as anyone can tell, other than- well. It’s a delicate subject, of course.”

“No wonder it’s simply rumors,” Sebastian said. “No gentleman would want to bring that to the attention of Bow Street.”

“So you see why I thought it worth bringing to your attention.” His aunt’s eyes gleamed as she glanced from him to Hero.

“It’s the perfect cover,” Hero mused, standing limned in the lamplight, her disheveled hair falling around her face, excitement lighting up her expression. “Such an outrageous theft would distract from anything else being taken or disarranged, and no one would ever admit to it having happened in the first place.”

“It is intriguing,” Sebastian admitted, setting down his glass and offering his aunt a hand to help her from her seat. “Just whom did you say had fallen victim to these thefts?”

“I didn’t,” she said, “and really, Sebastian! You needn’t sweep me from your house in such a fashion, it’s very rude.”

“I’m sorry, Aunt,” he said, swiftly kissing her cheek as Hero followed behind them. “You know I love you, but I simply cannot abide visitors when I’ve only just returned home. Now, who has had their - _indelicates_ , shall we say - taken?”

“Oh, very well,” the Duchess said, stopping at the door to straighten her turban. “Never let it be said I delayed the course of true love running smooth.” Behind him, Sebastian heard a strangled noise from Hero; something between a laugh and a cough. “Now, who was it...I believe Lady Jersey was one, and Lord Palmer’s household - he has all those daughters, you know. Oh, yes,” she said, as Morey opened the door, “and Lady Cumberland, as well. Though you’d never catch _her_ admitting it! Ha!”

“Sebastian, did you hear that?” Hero hissed, as he grabbed her hand once more, pulling her up the stairs. “Lady Cumberland! Do you think it could possibly all be connected somehow - our fathers’ scheming, Tom’s mysterious Russian, even these ridiculous thefts?”

“Maybe,” Sebastian said, stopping on the landing to spin her back against the bannister, pressing his lips to hers so firmly he felt her gasp. “I trust your undergarments are still exactly where they’re meant to be?”

Her mouth curving up in a slow smile, Hero leaned back, her fingers loosening his cravat, finding their way beneath to stroke the pulse beating ever more rapidly along his throat. “Why don’t you come find out?” she offered, slipping away, her hand trailing across his cheek as she went.

“You’ve done it,” he said, pursuing her up the stairs, into the safety of their bedroom.

“Done what?” Hero asked, twining her arms around his neck as he reached for the laces of her gown.

“Presented me with one mystery I cannot resist solving at this very moment,” he said, and buried himself at last in the pure pleasure of her.


End file.
